Four in stolen nickels case plead guilty

Diosdado Cabrera, Javier Gonzalez and Juan Brito admitted to having received, stored and exchanged the nickels for cash, while Jose Antonio Portales admitted to helping load, store, and bury them.

Sentencing for the four was set for Sept. 15 by U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro Benages, who accepted the pleas. All of the defendants face a maximum 10 years in prison.

The coins were originally stolen by a driver for a transportation company hired to deliver $180,000 in nickels from East Rutherford, N.J., to the Federal Reserve Bank in New Orleans.

The nickels failed to arrive at their intended destination last December, and a search for them, the driver and the truck was launched. The FBI discovered the empty tractor trailer abandoned in Fort Pierce but the driver, Angel Ricardo Mendoza, remains a fugitive.

An anonymous tip later led to the Miami home where 676 bags of nickels, worth approximately $135,200, were found buried behind a stable on the property.

That leaves $44,800, or nearly 900,000 nickels, of the original load still unaccounted for.

The FBI alerted a company that puts coin machines in supermarkets to watch for large nickel deposits, and a Winn-Dixie store in Miami reported Brito to police Jan. 15. He told officers that he had been saving nickels for nearly a year.

Then came the tip, which was also about marijuana being grown at the house. Portales led officers to 88 plants and the cash burial site. Portales and Gonzalez gave incriminating statements to investigators.

The group "decided to bury the nickels to avoid being caught" after Brito's chat with police, Moran wrote. Mendoza wanted the suspects to wire the money to him after the nickels were exchanged for cash, Cabrera was to pay the Britos for cashing in the nickels, and the coin bags were burned to cover up their source.